Polymarket has hired Travis VanderZanden, founder of e-scooter company Bird and former Uber vice president, as chief growth officer.

The appointment is part of a broader C-suite restructuring. VanderZanden’s hire follows other recent senior additions as the company prepares for the NFL season and midterms.

VanderZanden built Bird into a consumer-tech brand almost overnight, and Polymarket is buying that same acceleration playbook for a CFTC-regulated exchange.

His job is to close the gap with Kalshi’s $11.5 billion monthly volume before the NFL season and midterms create a hard deadline for platform readiness. Kalshi’s first-mover execution and sports data deal show what a working system looks like; Polymarket’s $20 billion valuation depends on proving it can match that speed without skipping compliance steps.

Polymarket now counts VanderZanden among at least half a dozen senior hires from consumer tech and traditional finance raids on Robinhood, Coinbase, and Nasdaq as it races to match Kalshi’s $11.5 billion monthly volume before the NFL season and midterms stress-test every platform’s infrastructure.